DIDO AND AENEAS

In the making

on tour from 17 to 31 October 2024

For dates and times, visit La Villette’s online ticketing service :

https://www.lavillette.com/manifestations/blanca-li-la-villette/

In Blanca Li’s pared-down staging, bathed in Pascal Laajili’s lighting, 10 dancers interpret the myth of Dido and Aeneas in a resolutely contemporary form. Emotions and body language take precedence over the narrative to create a soaring, poetic and dense work.

The recorded music, performed by Les Arts Florissants, lends a dramatic and extraordinarily lively dimension to the piece, accompanying Blanca Li’s sinuous, supple and ethereal choreography.

The Premiere will take place at the Opéra de Dijon on June 7, followed by a performance at the Granada International Music and Dance Festival on June 21. Next year, Didon et Enée will be performed at La Villette for 13 performances from October 17, before moving on to the Théâtre de Liège at the end of the year!

©Laurent Paillier

Voices and dancing are constantly interwoven, and the dancers merge naturally and gracefully, sometimes acting as shadows of the voices, embodying the feelings of the characters, who thus possess several bodies, each expressing itself in its own way.

The staging is full of fantasy and freedom, playing on the comic and tragic aspects of the libretto. The choreography is sinuous, supple, aerial and athletic, full of ideas, images, humor, cheekiness and color, reinforced by the power of the lighting and set design.

Blanca has freed herself from any sense of realism in relation to the text, allowing herself the freedom to address the symbolism and power of emotions in a resolutely contemporary set of images.

The synopsis

Few Baroque operas have known such a destiny and have aroused so many emotions
through the centuries. Composed by Purcell –
also known as the “Orpheus britannicus” – this absolute masterpiece of English masterpiece of English Baroque music of the sincere but ill-fated love affair of Aeneas, future founder of Rome, and Dido, Queen of Carthage.

distribution

Recorded music Les Arts Florissants - William Christie
Choreography and direction Blanca Li
assisted by Déborah Torres Garguilo and Glyslein Lefever
Compagnie Blanca Li 10 danseurs
Scenography Blanca Li
Lighting Pascal Laajili
Costumes Laurent Mercier

Dido and Aeneas is being created at the Compagnie Blanca Li studios at the Fiminco Foundation and will be performed from June of the 23-24 season.

DIDON AND AENEAS

Blanca Li Stage direction, choreography
assisted by Déborah Torres Garguilo and Glyslein Lefever
Set design Blanca Li with the collaboration of Pierre Attrait
Assisted by Nina Coulais

Les Arts Florissants Recorded music
Pascal Laajili Lighting
assisted by Jean-Luc Passarelli and Boris Pijetlovic
Laurent Mercier Costumes
assisted by Ghjulia Giusti Muselli

With Alizée Duvernois, Gaël Rougegrez, Julien Marie-Anne, Meggie Isabet,
Victor Virnot, Coline Fayolle, Maeva Lassere, Martina Consoli, Gaëtan
Vermeulen, Quentin Picot

———

Show in English

Running time: 1h15 without intermission

Program

HENRY PURCELL (1659 – 1695)
Dido and Aeneas Opera in three acts on a libretto by Nahum Tate, based on Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid, first performed in London in 1689.
Celestial Music Did The Gods Inspire, Z322

Your appointments

THE TOUR

The Premiere of Dido and Aeneas, directed by Blanca Li – on the recorded music of Henry Purcell’s opera by the baroque orchestra Les Arts Florissants conducted by William Christie – will take place at the Opéra de Dijon on June 7, 2024. The show will then be performed at the Granada International Music and Dance Festival on June 21, at Festival Internacional de Teatro clasico Merida on August 6, at La Villette in October and at the Théâtre de Liège between late December and early 2025! In 2025, the show will be staged at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes and at the Spoleto Dance Festival.